_{Thumbnail photo: Passengers board Advanced Air’s inaugural flight from Crescent City to Hawthorne on March 17, 2024. | Pnoto by Jessica Cejnar Andrews}

Nearly three weeks after President Donald Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill into law, Greg Burns helped Del Norte County supervisors unpack how it may affect their constituents.

Burns, a representative with Thorn Run Partners, Del Norte’s advocate in Washington D.C., started his presentation to the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday by mentioning a program not included in the legislation — the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self Determination Act.

The lobbyist touched on the Essential Air Service Program, the Community Development Block Grant program, a funding proposal from California’s senators on behalf of the Veterans Memorial Hall as well as the Last Chance Grade project’s long-awaited final environmental clearance.

Del Norte’s federal advocate also addressed concerns District 2 Supervisor Valerie Starkey raised regarding the One Big Beautiful Bill’s impacts to Medicare and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

“It’s maybe looking too far in the future, and you might not have the answers, but I really want to make sure that, with the proposed Medicare cuts, our hospital is on the list to be able to get subsidized in the event that those cuts cause fiscal damage,” Starkey said. “It’s our only hospital. We’re so rural, and it’s not just that we’re rural, but we’re isolated, and so I’m hoping that stays on your radar.”

Trump signed the massive budget reconciliation bill into law on July 4 after the House of Representatives approved it sans Democratic support, National Public Radio reported. Senate GOP members approved the bill on July 1 with Vice President JD Vance casting the tie-breaking vote after three Republicans voted against the bill, according to NPR.

Among the provisions it contains, the One Big Beautiful Bill extends individual tax rates Trump signed into law in 2017, includes a permanent $200 increase in the child tax credit and phases out clean energy tax credits introduced during the Biden administration.

The One Big Beautiful Bill implements work requirements for “some able-bodied adults” and more frequent eligibility checks for those who get healthcare coverage from Medicaid, CBS News reported on July 4. The legislation also shifts the costs of SNAP to some states, CBS reported. 

In response to Starkey’s question, Burns said that in addition to reducing Medicaid spending, the legislation removes government subsidies for people who purchase their insurance through the Affordable Care Act. The goal, he said, is to limit spending on those programs.

“By doing that, you’re likely leading to fewer people having insurance,” Burns said. “Yet when they go seek care from rural hospitals — or from any hospital for that matter, whether it’s rural or urban — they won’t have any insurance to pay their bills.”

This is why certain senators demanded a $50 billion pot of money be set aside to pay for hospitals to provide care to those who don’t have insurance, Burns said. He referred to a rural hospital stabilization fund that GOP senators lobbied for after seeing how Medicaid restrictions could impact those communities. 

“We can support Sutter Coast’s efforts to get some of that money when the impacts are felt,” the lobbyist told Starkey. “I will say there are some efforts by Republicans even to reduce those cuts or eliminate them altogether so the cuts to Medicaid and the ACA subsidies are never put into place. “

As for SNAP benefits, Burns said the proposal to shift the costs from the federal government to the state could hurt Del Norte County residents.

“We’ll have to try to monitor the impacts for the county,” he said.

One item that was expected in the One Big Beautiful Bill was the reauthorization of the Secure Rural Schools Act. According to Burns, while the House included a three-year extension of the program in its version of the bill, the Senate dropped it in their rewrite, which was the version Trump signed into law earlier this month.

Enacted more than a century ago, SRS aims to compensate counties that have large tracts of U.S. Forest Service land, making up for lost timber receipts and tax revenue. Last year Del Norte County received about $1.4 million, which is split between the county’s Roads Division and Del Norte Unified School District.

Del Norte — and 38 other California counties — should have received this year’s apportionment in April, according to Burns. Congress failed to include SRS in the budget it approved in March. 

When it came to approving its version of the One Big Beautiful Bill, the Senate didn’t want to boost “an overall expensive bill” more than they needed to, Burn said.

“They needed to shed provisions that were going to cost money and this is one of those ones that they shed,” he said.

The Senate did approve SRS in a standalone bill, however it’s now back with the House of Representatives, Burns said.

While Congress is on recess through Labor Day, both Burns and District 3 Supervisor Chris Howard said that Northern California representatives Doug LaMalfa and Jared Huffman support the SRS program.

Howard, who attended a National Association of Counties meeting in Philadelphia and visited Washington D.C. last week, said he spoke with LaMalfa about the Secure Rural Schools Act.

“We rely on that funding here at the county,” Howard said. “There is some agreement on the Senate side and Congressional side that this needs to happen and yet we don’t have a mechanism right now to move it to the president’s desk for signature.”

Both Burns and Howard said LaMalfa indicated that House Speaker Mike Johnson supported the SRS program and wants to reauthorize it “he’s just got to find the right way to do it.”
“The challenge with this, again, is that it spends money and in the House, you have a certain rule … you must reduce funding in one place in order to spend it in another place,” Burns said. “I think it’s more likely it gets packaged into something else and gets passed some time later this year, but we’ll keep pushing on that.”

Speaking to the budget proposal Trump released in March for the federal fiscal year 2026, which starts Oct. 1, Burns said it would have allocated limited funding to the Essential Air Service Program that “more than likely would have cost you all service in and out of Crescent City.”

Thankfully, he said, last week the House of Representatives passed a bill to fund the U.S. Department of Transportation and Housing and Urban Development for the 2026 fiscal year. 

With the Senate expected to support the EAS program, the USDOT-funded subsidy that allows for commercial air service into and out of Del Norte County, the program will likely be operating for another year, Burns said.

As for the Community Development Block Grant, though Trump proposed terminating it in its 2026 budget, the House proposed allocating $3.3 billion, Burns said.

“I expect the Senate to be equally as supportive as they get to work on their funding bills,” he said. 

With respect to the Veterans Memorial Hall, Burns said U.S. senators Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla submitted community-funded project requests to support its renovation.

Burns said Thorn Run Partners didn’t forward the community-funded project request for the vets hall to Huffman. Since fiscal year 2025 earmarks were stripped out of Congress’s continuing resolution to fund the government, Burns said most representatives resubmitted the projects they were advocating for last year.

“We did, however, submit the project to your senators, they were considering new ideas, and I’m pleased to report that they did request funding for that renovation at the vets hall,” he said. “We hope to have positive news on that within the next couple of weeks.”

As for Last Chance Grade — “a drum we’ve been beating now for the past 10-plus years,” according to Burns — the lobbyist said he anticipates a completed record of decision, which is the final environmental clearance, by the end of the year.

According to Howard, much of his time in Washington DC was spent lobbying for the Last Chance Grade bypass of U.S. 101 with Padilla’s office as well as representatives with the U.S. Department of Transportation and the Federal Highways Administration. Howard noted that there have been a decade’s of work done on designing the bypass, which consists of a 6,000-foot-long tunnel. The District 3 Supervisor also pointed to the project’s massive $2.1 billion price tag.

“The price tag is going to be the second-largest cost in California history for that type of infrastructure, a tunnel,” Howard said, adding that most of the funding will need to come from the federal government. “The only thing more expensive than this project in the State of California was the construction of the Bay Bridge. This is a massive lift for the State of California.”

According to Burns, Caltrans has already set aside $277 million for the Last Chance Grade project. He said he remembered when the state agency secured the first $5 million for the endeavor about six years ago.

With a $2.1 billion cost, however, Burns said he and Del Norte County representatives will have to work until the project’s expected completion in 2039 to educate DOT representatives.

“We will definitely have a different administration before this project’s completed, so we’re going to have to continue the effort over the next, unfortunately, decade-plus to keep it going,” he said.